PERCEPTIONS
OF THE
UNITED STATES
❑ ❑ ❑
Nur Bilge Criss
I
N TURKEY, when people look at the American government’s so-called war of preemption in Iraq and the Bush administration’s errant confidence in its right to make the world over in its own image, power management becomes an issue of impor-tance. At some emotional level, some members of the political and in-tellectual elite can vaguely relate to the temptation, the peril, and the grandiosity of the dream of a vast order crafted in one’s own image and controlled by one’s own interests. But the long-gone Ottoman imperial reach also reminds that an empire’s longevity depends not just on the power of its military but on the quality of its statesmanship and its ability to disseminate among less powerful peoples at least the appearance of justice. Military power has to withstand the test of moral authority to insure that bloody conflict does not turn the complex pleasures and responsi-bilities of an empire into a nightmare of endless rebellion and resistance.1Turks, today, from across the political spectrum fear that the United States, the contemporary aspirant to world hegemon, has lost its moral authority as it dispenses its own unacceptable brand of vigilante justice. Everyone registers America’s military might, its ability to “shock and awe” both its allies and its enemies. People do not, however, trust that the
United States has the moral and political capacity to use that power wisely to safeguard its friends, eliminate its enemies, or manage the com-plexities of a world in which no nation is simply “with” the United States or “against” the United States. In particular, Turkish policy elites are frustrated by the American government’s failures to respect Turkey’s own geopolitical concerns and to understand how Turkey seeks to bal-ance its secular raison d’être with its religious cultural needs. And as the war in Iraq drags on and grows more horrific, the people of Turkey turn away in greater numbers from the United States. Distrust of the Ameri-can government’s motives has created a popular, often hyperbolic, if also fashionable anti-Americanism in Turkey.
This essay presents a tour of the horizon of Turkish perspectives on America. First it will provide a historical perspective that explores how culture, politics, and security issues created bonds between Turkey and the United States. Then, it will examine why elites’ acceptance of Ameri-can alliance and a general admiration of AmeriAmeri-can culture have not pro-duced support of current U.S. foreign policies or a more stable basis for a pro-American public opinion in Turkey.
Constructing the American Image in a Receptive Turkey
On April 5, 1946, the USS Missouri brought the remains of deceased Turkish ambassador Ahmet Münir Ertegün to Istanbul. The ambassa-dor had died during World War II, and the casket could not be trans-ported until after the war. The timing, however, was auspicious because it immediately followed Stalin’s demands from Turkey for territory and bases to be used for the joint defense of the Turkish Straits. The Turks interpreted the visit of the battleship as a gesture that the United States would stand by Ankara against Soviet threats. Turkey was jubilant be-cause the Missouri symbolized an end to Ankara’s military and diplo-matic isolation, a position dreaded in the country’s foreign policy tradi-tion. To honor the Missouri, the government issued postage stamps, and cigarette manufacturers produced wildly popular special cigarettes. The ship’s American officers reciprocated by inviting thousands of admiring Turkish citizens to tour the vessel. At the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, America and Turkey were fast becoming allied.
President Truman, famously, would formalize that alliance and make Tur-key, along with Greece, a recipient of American Cold War support.
Throughout the 1950s, as Turkey and the United States formed a geopolitical alliance under the auspices of NATO, the kind of symbolic or cultural bonds that the voyage of the Missouri produced, multiplied. For example, early in the decade, Turks discovered that Americans were listening to a catchy pop tune titled “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”:
Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople So if you have a date in Constantinople She’ll be waiting in Istanbul.
The song became a hit in Turkey and definitely appealed to Turkish lin-guistic nationalism (though it is highly doubtful that American song-writer Jimmy Kennedy had any such thoughts in mind when he wrote it).2Soon thereafter, disc jockeys at Radio Ankara found an even better
cultural bridge. The marvelous Eartha Kitt had recorded an old Istanbul/ Macedonian song, “Üsküdar’a Gider I˙ken” (On the way to Scutari) in Turkish and made it into an unlikely pop hit in the United States. Kitt had heard the song when she had toured Turkey in 1951 as a member of Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe. Radio Ankara gave the song ample airtime, and it became a big hit, as did Ms. Kitt.3There is no accessible
evidence of exactly why she visited Turkey in 1951, but it is likely that her trip was subsidized by the U.S. government, just as other American en-tertainers introduced jazz and blues to Turkey as part of the cultural cold war promotion of the United States abroad.4Along those lines, a third
musical tune, “The Song of Friendship” (Dostluk S¸arkısı), recorded in 1954 right after the Korean War (1950– 53), was perhaps not so myste-riously distributed free of charge throughout Turkey and aired repeat-edly. The lyrics said that Turkey would stand by the United States until eternity in fighting for freedom, and that the two peoples had become blood brothers fighting together in Korea.5
American novels and other works of fiction, too, became widely avail-able in Turkey in translation during the early years of the Cold War. Even many years later, older Turkish people remember their happy discovery of works by John Steinbeck, Jack London, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry, William Saroyan,
and Mark Twain.6 By the 1950s, American children’s books were also
available in Turkey. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain), Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (Beecher Stowe), Bambi (Salten), and A Tree Grows in Brook-lyn (Smith) gave a glimpse of America to Turkey’s middle-class urban
children. An entire generation of young Turks grew up on comic books about Tom Mix, Daniel Boone (Texas), Wild Bill Hickok (Pekos Bill), Calamity Jane (Kalamiti Ceyn), Lucky Luke (Red Kit), and the Dalton Brothers (Dalton Biraderler). These characters were all perceived as good though mischievous and intriguingly rebellious.
Hollywood, naturally, had a distinct imprint abroad, too, buttressing U.S. cultural expansion. American movies played all over Turkey through-out the Cold War years. Some people remember watching Khartoum as youngsters in the mid-1960s and not thinking twice about its portrait of British imperialism as seen through the lens of American movie-making. Gordon “Pasha,” played by the dreamy Charlton Heston (pre-NRA days!), symbolized the “good,” while Ahmad Mahdi’s rebellion against British occupation and colonial rule in 1885 symbolized the “barbaric.”7Across
the cultural matrix, American songs, films, and literature showed the people of Turkey a vibrant, dynamic society that seemed heroic, gener-ous, and open-minded.
During the 1950s and 1960s, of course, more than culture linked Turkey and the United States. The Cold War brought the two nations together, and Turkey’s political elite looked to the United States for security and for economic leadership. Upon President Dwight Eisenhower’s invitation in 1954 (January 28–February 27, 1954), President Celal Bayar of Tur-key visited the United States. He was very impressed and was pleased to be received with unusual pomp and circumstance by the American Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities,8former minorities of the Ottoman
Empire. In the election campaign of 1957, President Bayar publicly stated that Turkey’s role model for progress was the United States; and that in thirty years’ time, Turkey would become a little America.9
America’s direct economic aid to Turkey was widely appreciated as well. Governing elites, no doubt, most appreciated the massive military support. But families, too, were on the receiving end of generous sup-plies of American surplus food. Although at least one little girl, Nur Bilge, was less than thrilled by the American powdered milk and cheese that she was offered at school, rather oddly, given the fact that I attended
an exclusive private elementary school. However, the Turkish Ministry of Education had ordered distribution of these supplies to all schools re-gardless of need.
In the Cold War years, America was not just an abstract presence or mediated through its cultural products. Thousands of Americans ap-peared in Turkey. Professor I˙lber Ortaylı, an Ottoman social historian, maintains that key aspects of westernization were, in fact, introduced to Turkey by the Americans in the post–World War II years.10 Since the
eighteenth century, European-style westernization had been largely con-fined to Istanbul and Izmir as well as to limited circles, such as the mili-tary, medical schools, missionary schools, the Levantines (Europeans who settled in the Near East, indigenous people who belonged to ancient Christian sects and Jews) and some upper-middle-class families. During the 1950s and after, however, Americans—government officials, military personnel, and businessmen—appeared all over Turkey. Many middle-class apartment buildings in Ankara and Izmir had at least one Ameri-can family resident. And even if the Turkish families could not speak English (though their children were, by the 1950s, studying English in school as a second language), the medium of reciprocal hospitality served as a common language. Similar, though more limited informal contacts took place in Turkish provincial cities where U.S. military bases were located. During this anxious Cold War time, the United States was widely treated as a heroic benefactor, and the Soviet Union was deni-grated. Even food names were affected by the Cold War battle; potato salad had been known as Russian salad in Turkey, but in the 1950s it was renamed American salad (the recipe, fortunately, stayed the same). And a popular children’s limerick that in the 1940s ended with the line “Germans are swine” became, in the 1950s, “Russians are swine.” Amer-icans were a vivid and powerful force in the cultural and political life of Turkey.
Transformations of the American Image
Many scholars have carefully explored the ups and downs of American-Turkish government-to-government relations during the Cold War, and that exercise will not be repeated here.11Needless to say, throughout the
Cold War, perceptions of the United States varied, depending on global political and domestic conjunctures, as well as during crises in bilateral relations. These usually stemmed from issues related to Turkey’s percep-tions of American infringements on its sovereign rights and “out-of-area” activities of the United States that affected Turkey.
A few major turning points in the two nations’ generally warm rela-tions, however, should be briefly noted. The first major sour note be-tween the allies occurred when the U.S. Congress applied an embargo on arms transfers to Turkey, between February 1975 and August 1978. The proximate cause of this sanction was Turkey’s armed intervention into Cyprus in 1974, to prevent ethnic cleansing of the Turkish Cypriots by the Greek Cypriots. Congressional leaders deemed that since U.S.-supplied arms were used for purposes other than self-defense, Turkey’s military action had violated section 620(x) of the Foreign Assistance Act. Though other U.S. allies had employed American arms elsewhere, (and in this case, Greece had done the same), sanctions were imposed on a NATO ally—Turkey—for the first time in the history of the alliance. Turks felt betrayed by their longtime ally, and both the Turkish military and the economy were hit badly by the embargo. As a policy measure aimed at forcing Turkish troop withdrawal from Cyprus, the embargo was a total failure. The Turkish government refused to bow to American pressure, and the Greeks, pleased to see the Turks suffer at others’ hands, lost all interest in negotiating. Turkey retaliated by closing down U.S. bases and listening installations at a time when Washington needed those assets to monitor Soviet compliance with arms reduction agreements. The punitive aspect of the sanction fed Turkish anti-Americanism, and instilled feelings of suspicion towards the United States on the part of Turkish decision-makers that still reverberate today.12
One of the most interesting points regarding anti-Americanism in Turkey during the late 1970s is that it became a useful rhetorical tool and policy claim for domestic militants on both the radical Left and the ultra Right (including Islamic radicals). Extremists on the left claimed to be fighting for Turkish autonomy from the United States. Their antago-nists, the extreme Right and Islamists, were supposedly fighting against atheist Communism. It should be underlined, however, that none of these factions attacked American citizens. Leftist anti-Americanism was
aimed at the government of Turkey, while the rightist factions’ rage fell upon the leftists. All sides understood that Turkey had voluntarily joined NATO and opted for strong linkages to the United States. No one claimed that Americans had forced themselves on the government.13This may be
one distinguishing factor of anti-Americanism à la Turca as opposed to anti-Americanism elsewhere in the Near East.
In a case of very bad timing, in 1979, shortly after the embargo had been ended, the Carter administration asked Turkey for the use of I˙ncirlik air base in an attempt to obstruct the Islamic revolution in Iran, and then again to try to rescue American hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Without any public discussion, both requests were promptly turned down. That same year, President Carter asked the Turkish government for permission for U-2 reconnaissance flights to oversee Soviet compli-ance with the SALT II agreement. Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit insisted that the Soviets had to be informed, which the American interlocutors were not willing to do. Ankara rejected the proposal. Then SALT II be-came a nonissue, because the U.S. Congress did not ratify the agreement, and that point of contention between the allies, at least, disappeared.
The 1980s were a trying decade for Turkey, both domestically and in-ternationally, but were also a time of improved relations with the United States. On September 12, 1980, a military coup took place, putting an end to fratricide and coalition-government deadlocks. European na-tions responded to this military coup by threatening to sever their ties with Turkey. The Carter administration reacted far more calmly, an atti-tude much appreciated in Ankara. As had been true after the two previ-ous military takeovers (1960 and 1971) the military quickly returned to their barracks and handed over the government to the newly formed Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) after national elections. The rising star of ANAP, Prime Minister Turgut Özal, carried out American-style liberal fiscal and economic reform packages, which had been pre-pared before the coup. The market economy brought increased wealth, conspicuous consumption patterns, and a nouveau riche class with aspirations towards an American lifestyle, although only in its superfi-cial, material manifestations. An aura of Americanization also pervaded private educational institutions in Turkey, which flourished from the 1980s onward.
From the End of the Cold War to September 11
The end of the Cold War immediately changed the geopolitical relation-ship between Turkey and the United States. Turkey’s political elite feared, at first, that the demise of the Soviet Union might also lead the United States and the NATO nations to lose interest in Turkey. After a short pe-riod of introspection, Ankara began to develop Turkey as a regional power,14even as it chose to remain a committed NATO member.
According to Duygu Sezer, professor of international relations, Turkey’s NATO membership was not only perceived domestically as an expedient way to modernize the military. Turkey was also adopting key ideas about national security from the West, such as collective thinking, collective preparedness, and international solidarity.15In line with these concepts
of collective security, in 1993, Ankara took a leadership role in urging Washington to take military action, in conjunction with NATO, against Serbian aggression over Bosnia-Herzegovina. European Union and UN declarations had proved ineffective in stopping the massacres of the Bosnians. Although NATO was not activated during this conflict, later in 1993, Turkey not only managed to help broker peace between Bosnia and Croatia, but it also helped to establish the Bosnian-Croat Federation. In 1995, under U.S. auspices, Serbian aggression came to a halt with the Day-ton Peace Accord. Turkey’s political and military leaders were pleased when the United States supported Turkey’s participation in the multi-lateral peacekeeping operation Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia. Turkey and the United States continued to cooperate closely in 1998 when conflict between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs turned into armed aggression. When diplomacy failed, Turkey participated in the NATO air campaign against Serbia by sending F-16s and by implementing military-economic sanctions. Later, Turkey took part in the multilateral peace force Kosova Force (KFOR). U.S.-Turkish collaboration continued in 1999 when Ankara initiated a Balkan peacekeeping force. The South-eastern Europe Brigade (SEEBRIG) consisted of Greek, Bulgarian, and Turkish troops. These forces would be deployed in NATO or WEU (West-ern European Union) operations against future conflict in the Balkans, under the orders of the UN or the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).16In the late 1990s the United States also
supported Turkey’s approach to constructing a massive regional oil pipe-line: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) project, which will eventually trans-port Kazakh and Azerbaijani oil to the Mediterranean trans-port of Ceyhan.
This cozy relationship hit a positive high when President William Clin-ton visited Turkey on November 14–19, 1999, on the occasion of an OSCE meeting. Clinton was the first and only U.S. president ever invited to speak at the Turkish parliament. When he arrived at parliament, he re-ceived a standing ovation. When he told the assembled representatives that he believed in a “strategic partnership with Turkey” he was enthusi-astically cheered. Turkish attitudes toward the United States, at least as they were represented in the mass media, had returned to the cheerful, if naive, harmony of the 1950s.
The horrors of September 11 only served to compound Turkish sup-port for the United States. Given its own immediate past history of fight-ing the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), it is not surprisfight-ing that Turkey stood by the United States in its fight against terrorism dur-ing the Afghan war. This support was cemented by the Bush adminis-tration’s efforts to create a multilateral effort under the auspices of the UN and NATO. Professor Ali Karaosmanogˇlu wrote, “The September 12 (1368) and September 28 (1373) resolutions of the Security Council, af-firmed the right of individual and common response of the United States against terrorism. . . . Thus NATO included the anti-terrorism struggle [in] the common defense obligations recorded in the 5th Article of the North Atlantic Alliance.”17
However, when the United States decided to attack Iraq, based on slim evidence and without the explicit approval of the UN Security Council, both the government and the people of Turkey were astonished. People believed that the United States, by acting without strong international support and solidarity, as it had done when Washington attacked Afghanistan in pursuit of the Taliban-supported Al Qaeda during the previous year, had broken faith with the world and was acting, instead, like a bully. Evidence of such a shift in people’s attitude is never easy to measure, but not long after the Iraq invasion I worked with a number of my university students to gain a sense for it and to analyze it. They interviewed fifty professional men and women about their views of America. Students spoke to people who were at least fifty-five years old because I wanted to hear from men and women who had a range of
experiences with the United States and who could contextualize the shock of the Iraqi invasion. These interviews are far from a scientific sampling and are by no means representative of the general population, but they tell us something useful about how a sophisticated group of older Turks who were predisposed to look favorably upon the United States felt postinvasion.
To put the matter clearly, most felt disappointed if not downright alienated. Many feared that the Iraq invasion revealed the true face of the United States that they had failed to see before. One older man spoke for practically all of those interviewed when he stated that when he was young he used to think of the United States as the defender of democ-racy and freedom, a model nation. But when he traveled in the United States in 2004, he observed that American democracy failed to generate a meaningful debate on the war. He was disheartened to see that so many Americans regarded themselves and their nation as the epitome of vir-tuousness and that anyone who opposed the American war effort must be evil. Many of the men and women interviewed spoke similarly of feeling dismayed by the Americans’ arrogant use of force. The Cold War era, many said, had made them think that the United States—and few differentiated here between the American people and the American gov-ernment—was genuinely motivated by noble ideals and even an altruis-tic impulse to help others. After the Iraq invasion they felt that they had been naive in believing so strongly in the United States. Overwhelm-ingly, they resented the Bush administration’s attempts to force Turkey to cooperate with the American attack, and several argued that the United States used its economic power, in general, and its control over the In-ternational Monetary Fund, in particular, to pressure Turkey into acting against its own interests and its cultural precepts. Several argued that the United States wants Turkey to carry out America’s dirty work in the Middle East and become a base for American imperial expansion in the region.18
Most of the men and women interviewed insisted that the strong, mu-tually beneficial tactical Turkish-American partnership ended with the Iraqi crisis. Many maintained that America could not force Turkey to do its bidding and that American hegemony in the region could not exist without the acquiescence of the people of Turkey. Thus, Turkey could and should pursue a regional and international path separate from that
of the United States. On the other hand, most also feared that Turkey could not afford to confront the United States because Turkey’s interests do overlap quite often with those of the Americans; thus, Turkey can only cautiously resist Washington’s wayward behavior and ambition.
It was not particularly surprising to see the specific opinions offered by this older, sophisticated generation on the Iraq crisis. The sense of be-trayal so many revealed, however, was remarkable. America had long represented an exceptionalist nation in their political imaginations, even through the various ups and downs in bilateral relations they had expe-rienced. The Iraq crisis and their sense that the United States was now aspiring to the role of international bully had qualitatively changed their perspective, but it also made one cognizant that many displayed an old-fashioned “orientalist,” if you will, approach to Turkey’s relation with the United States. Several seemed to believe that there was little Turkey could really do about the imperialist ambitions of the United States and that it might be best to simply go along, foot-dragging where possible and criticizing on occasion.19While it is true that a gross asymmetry in
power exists between Turkey and the United States, it was striking how hopeless many of the men and women interviewed were about Turkey’s ability to determine its own policy and future. This attitude may also have something to do with their lack of confidence in the current Turk-ish government. It has been an unfortunate trait of the Eastern peoples (though historically much less so in Turkey) to blame third parties for all ills. Indigenous historiography of the Middle East, at least until very recently, has focused on how Western imperialism kept Persia down (as if their leaders had nothing to do with it); on how Ottoman imperialism had kept the Arabs down (as if they had no will or agency); and on how Western imperialism had reduced the Ottomans economically to a semicolonial position (as if incessant wars of the seventeenth, eigh-teenth, and nineteenth centuries had not drained the Ottoman trea-sury). Avoiding the concept of will and agency not only oversimplifies history, but also feeds the psychology of victimization. The result is a vi-cious cycle, which holds no hope or offers no dignity to the younger gen-erations. Is it any wonder, then, that the young turn to radicalism in ex-treme cases? This state of affairs does not absolve authorities who have been using religion as an effective opiate. The opiate no longer serves as a sedative, but has rather become a stimulant gone awry towards nihilistic
ends, as in the case of September 11. Listening to the comments of many of the older generation interviewed compels one to think that one of Turkey’s foremost objectives must be to prevent this type of social psy-chology and the fierce activist manifestation it produces, that is, politi-cal Islam,20from entrenching itself seditiously, especially now that there is
a majority government in Ankara implicated by an Islamist past.21
Challenges, Threat Perceptions, and Prospects in the New Century
After the Iraq invasion, four formidable challenges face Turkey. One is the profile of the current government. Its members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogˇan, were until recently proponents of what is, by Turkish standards, a reactionary Islam. Now the leadership claims only to represent a conservative-right, democratic position. And it is true that republican traditions in Turkey have a taming effect on mili-tancy and extremism. Likewise, our democratic institutions, such as the presidency and constitutional court, impede the Justice and Develop-ment Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) governDevelop-ment’s attempts to pass new laws that would promote religiously oriented policies, espe-cially in the realm of education. Still, the political-religious firestorms ignited by the United States in the region may strengthen the reactionary Islamic tendencies of the government.
The second challenge, thus, comes from Washington. Of late, Wash-ington has been casually and dangerously throwing around the term
moderate Islam22and using it to characterize pro-American governments
throughout the region. During the first anniversary of the Iraq war, U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell said that Iraq would become an Islamic republic, just like Turkey and Pakistan. Further, Turkey has been lumped together, shockingly for many here, with pro-American Arab nations as an example of a “moderate Islamic” nation. In part, American govern-ment officials who use this term seem to believe that by demonstrating support for “moderate Islamic” nations they are proving that America is not opposed to Islam but only “radical” Islam or Islamic terrorism.
This terminology has dangerous connotations in Turkey. The Turkish Republic is not a country built on principles of “moderate Islam.” The nation of Turkey has long chosen a secular identity. Characterizing
Tur-key as a “moderate Islamic” nation injures Turks’ self-conception: the only democratic and secular majority-Muslim country in the region. Tur-key, with all its shortcomings, has worked hard to embrace a secular, Western identity, and it does neither Ankara nor Washington any good to promote Turkey as a “moderate Islamic” nation. Such a characteriza-tion only gives support to those elements within Turkey who want to drive the nation away from its secular path and toward a fundamentally religious one. Murat Yetkin, in an editorial in the Turkish daily Radikal, stated, “Some ideologues, assessing that the Turkish example proves that democracy and free market economy can thrive in a Muslim society, try to elaborate the ‘Turkish model’ for Middle Eastern countries. . . . They seem to forget that the state of affairs has been possible only because Turkey chose the secular way.”23The deputy chief of the Turkish General
Staff, General I˙lker Bas¸bugˇ, registered the position of the Turkish Armed Forces in Washington by emphasizing that a “moderate Islamic state” is still only an Islamic state and is incompatible with democracy and secu-larism.24Americans who push for support of “moderate Islam” are
play-ing with dynamite (one would think that Cold War support of Islamic extremists, including Al Qaeda and the Taliban, in Afghanistan would have taught American policymakers a lesson); they need to pay far greater attention to how such rhetoric—and related policies—plays in Turkey and other Islamic-majority nations that face complex internal political dynamics. The latest faux pas in cultural relations between America and Turkey was when the American Field Service exchange program admin-istrators, in their infinite wisdom, began to place Turkish high school students with families of Muslim Malaysian or Indonesian origins in the United States. These families practiced Islamic rituals daily in their lives. They required the Turkish students to do the same, imposing strict dress codes on their female guests as well. Needless to say many Turkish stu-dents returned home in protest.
The third related challenge in Turkey is terrorism, both in its religious radical and PKK-separatist forms. While Ankara’s and Washington’s in-terests are confluent in the first case, it appears that they are not so in the second. Given that there are approximately five thousand PKK terrorists in northern Iraq living among the Iraqi Kurds, and that the latter is the only ethnic group that lends support to the American occupation of Iraq (as opposed to the Arabs), Washington and Ankara have a problem.
While American government officials are sensitive to Turkey’s concerns about the PKK terrorists’ presence in Iraq, this problem is not likely to fade away. It is and will remain a serious potential flashpoint in bilateral relations.
Last but not least among the challenges facing Turkey and the United States relates to Turkey’s quest to become an EU member. In December 2004, the EU gave a date for accession negotiations to begin, and Ankara obtained the most desirable political balance in its Euro-Atlantic rela-tions. The United States has been very supportive of a European Turkey all along, although the American pressure on the Europeans backfired on more than one occasion. However, while U.S.-Turkish relations vary, depending on conjuncture, EU membership is a civilizational issue of permanence. On the eve of the Iraq war in 2003, Ankara was at very critical crossroads, having to make a strategic choice between the U.S.-Israel camp and the EU. It chose the latter by instinct and precedent.
The Test of Will and Agency: The Iraq Crisis
Turkey’s geography is aesthetically a blessing. It also makes Turkey inte-gral to American’s regional plans. Even before 9/11, American geopolitical strategists were overly enthusiastic about Turkey’s utility in strengthen-ing America power in the region. Ian O. Lesser, a policy analyst for the RAND Corporation, wrote:
Beyond Turkey’s potential to play a positive role in regions of importance to US strategy, the United States has an interest in Turkey as a direct con-tributor to US freedom of action—in essence, power projection—in ad-jacent regions. . . . The fact that the Özal government permitted the United States to use I˙ncirlik base and other facilities for offensive air op-erations against Iraq during the Gulf War encouraged the belief that Ankara would welcome a more forward-leaning approach to access and overflight.25
Turkey’s leaders and educated public were—and are—well aware that when the United States government looks at Turkey, it sees a forward base for its military adventures. Immediately prior to the Iraq war, de-bate in Turkey over its role in the forthcoming belligerency was heated
and polarized. Some argued that Turkey had to be militarily involved in the Iraqi operation in order to have a say in its aftermath.26This position
was particularly important for those who were eager to join the “coali-tion of the willing” in attempts to guarantee that an independent (Iraqi) Kurdistan would not emerge. S¸aban Kardas¸, a foreign policy analyst for the Turkish Daily News, presented another viewpoint:
A choice is, therefore, being forced upon Turkey. Either it will try to be-come a so-called “stable” or regional power, in the service of some inter-national interests, by maintaining and reproducing the current political culture, which is dominated by military and security considerations, or it will choose to become an ordinary, but democratic and self-sufficient state, in the service of its own citizens, by focusing on the necessary eco-nomic and political reforms and restructuring and transformation of its system.27
When the United States threatened to attack Iraq, even as rational debate continued, scenarios based on conspiracy theories became rampant in Turkey. A member of the Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti, DSP) even argued in February 2003 that after the United States conquered Iraq for its oil, it would attack Turkey in order to seize our deposits of boracite as a future alternative fuel (Turkey holds 68 percent of the bo-racite reserves in the world).28
What caused a crisis between Washington and Ankara, however, was Prime Minister Erdogˇan’s encouragement of, and promises to, Washing-ton, which preceded any parliamentary resolution that would allow U.S. basing in Turkey and open the northern front of attack to Iraq.29People
in Turkey still wonder how and why Erdogˇan had been invited to the White House in December 2002 when he did not even hold the portfolio of premiership and what he had been promised for helping the United States. When the resolution was rejected by two votes in the parliament on March 1, 2003, the American government, as well as much of the American mass media, blasted Turkey as some kind of ingrate or worse. William Safire of the New York Times wrote particularly vituperative ar-ticles.30 In one, he stated, “The new, Islamic-influenced government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogˇan transformed that formerly staunch U.S. ally into Saddam’s best friend.”31In a broadcasted interview on CNN-Turk, U.S.
for not having taken a strong leadership role. He then asserted that Tur-key would be badly hurt by its refusal to join the “coalition of the will-ing.” His meaning was made clear when Washington cancelled its offer of a $6 billion grant, convertible to $24 billion in long-term, low-interest loans, which would have helped Turkey refinance its $145 billion state debt.32 According to Wolfowitz, Turkey could only repair its relations
with Washington if Ankara cooperated with the United States on resolv-ing future disputes with Iran and Syria. Washresolv-ington’s idea of public diplomacy apparently did not rule out a public display of blackmail and threat.
The government prior to the AKP administration had hoped to fi-nesse the crisis by convincing Saddam Hussein to comply with Ameri-can demands. When that failed, Ankara asked Saddam to seek asylum abroad to save his people from war. It was to no avail. Afterwards, the AKP’s strategic and foreign policy advisors, composed of cronies, had convinced the cabinet that the American armed forces could not attack Iraq without military basing in Turkey. Some in Turkey pointed out the economic costs of not complying with the United States and also sug-gested that having upwards of sixty thousand American troops in south-eastern Turkey would be a financial boon for the ailing region. Still oth-ers feared that once the massive American troop deployment arrived, it might never leave. Overarching this debate was a general sense among many members of the parliament that the planned American attack on Iraq was not a just war. The Turkish president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, pub-licly insisted on a UN Security Council resolution, because the Resolu-tion 1483 did not authorize war.
Given the historical record and nationalist historiography of both sides, no affection is lost between the Arabs and Turks. But Turks do not find it easy to make war on Arabs. First of all, Turks have long under-stood Arabs to be the “chosen people” (Kavm-i Necib) because Islam was revealed to Prophet Mohammad. Second, to wage war on an Arab nation as an instrument of Western policy contradicts traditional tenets of Ottoman/Turkish foreign policy.33 There is no compelling reason why
that should change, even if the interlocutor of the nineteenth century, Britain, is reincarnated as the United States of America. None of the above, however, rules out war with an Arab country. But to make such a war, Turks must see how vital Turkish interests are at stake. No one could
make that case. So, as a result, not without grave concern about con-fronting the massive power and leverage of the United States, Turkey— against the wishes of Prime Minister Erdogˇan—turned down Washing-ton’s request for basing large numbers of American troops, though it did, as a gesture of goodwill, open its airspace for logistical support for the war.
In late summer 2003, after the American military mission was accom-plished, Prime Minister Erdogˇan volunteered troops for a peacekeeping mission, even as Iraqi resistance meant there was not yet a peace to keep. Erdogˇan wanted both to restore U.S.-Turkish relations and to consolidate power over his party members in the parliament who had “failed” him dismally during the March 2003 voting. Using his political power, Er-dogˇan pushed a resolution through the parliament to send troops as a stabilization and peacekeeping force to Iraq despite overwhelming public opposition.
Of course, that deployment never happened. Turkey wanted to put its troops into the Dohuk, Kirkuk, and Tikrit area, to safeguard Kurdish is-sues,34 whereas Washington insisted on the southern territory (Shiite
territory). When the Kurds of northern Iraq and the Iraqi Ruling Coun-cil objected to any Turkish military presence, the Bush administration went along with their wishes, and the Turkish military did not enter Iraq. As a result of this impasse, Washington has been, and is almost certain to continue, pressuring Turkey to allow the U.S. military to establish for-ward bases in Turkey for the Iraq conflict and whatever other regional use of force American planners foresee. According to news reports, plans were afoot to enlarge the I˙ncirlik air base, deploy more weapons and military personnel, and build three naval bases on the Black Sea ports of Turkey.35The latter is not only in contravention of the 1936 Montreux
Straits Convention, but in all probability would be deemed a hostile act by the Russian Federation. The saga is far from over. In 2006, the United States proposed to expand NATO’s “Operation Active Endeavor” to the Black Sea. This operation had been activated in 2001, and the navies of Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, and the United States have been monitoring commercial ships to deter potential terrorist activity in the Mediterranean. Russia and Turkey maintain that such a move would also compromise the Montreux Treaty of 1936. The multinational Black Sea Naval Force of the littoral states, which was
established to do exactly what Operation Active Endeavor does, is al-ready quite capable of carrying out such deterrence missions.36 Such
pressures contribute to anxieties in Turkey that the United States may yet cause other confrontations in Turkey’s neighborhood.
Public Opinion in Turkey
The war in Iraq, America’s continuing pressure on Turkey to cooperate in that war, and a general sense that the United States is not done assert-ing its will in the region has produced fear, anxiety, and anger in Turkey. As a partial result, a fierce nationalism is on the rise. It should be noted that these rising nationalist feelings, which range from genuine concern for the nation’s safety and well-being to fascistic and xenophobic ap-proaches are not just the result of American policies in the region. Dif-ferent strata of the society are finding it very difficult to comply with everything that the European Union requires of Ankara, above and be-yond the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership. Further, when major EU countries announced that even if and when Turkey fulfills all of this criteria, referenda will still have to be held in each EU country about Ankara’s accession, many Turks were terribly disheartened. Moreover, Iran’s nuclear challenge, which may attract American retribution, has also produced very strong public reactions.
The most obvious face of Turkey’s heightened and often anti-Ameri-can nationalism anti-Ameri-can be seen in its popular culture. Hypernationalist novels are all the rage, even among well-educated people. Thirty books, alone, on the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I—one of Ottoman Turkey’s relatively recent battlefield victories—were published in the last two years.37Then came the infamous novella Metal Storm (Metal
Fırtına), which has sold over half a million copies since its publication in
2004.38This trashy novel features a U.S. military attack on Istanbul and
subsequent U.S. occupation of Turkey. Why? To take over the boracite mines, of course. Only by joining forces with Russia and the always help-ful EU is Turkey able to liberate itself from the diabolical Americans. All kinds of conspiracy theories were hatched in Turkey over the publica-tion of this book. Some argued that the “ficpublica-tion” was part of U.S. psy-chological war on Turkey.39When rumor had it that Metal Storm had
been approved for publication by the Turkish General Staff, the military felt obligated to issue a statement of denial.40The authors of the novella
laughed all the way to the bank, and have produced other political thrillers such as Lost Casket (Kayıp Naas¸), the story of Israeli agents who, during a fictional U.S. occupation of Ankara, steal Atatürk’s casket and use his DNA to clone him. Thankfully this work and related fiction has not found an audience comparable to that of Metal Storm.
American officials did not react calmly to the popularity of Metal
Storm and other anti-American screeds. On a visit to Turkey in February
2005, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith asked that anti-American rhetoric cease. Nothing short of censorship, however, could have helped. Robert Pollock of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article condemning such attitudes in Turkey, entitled “The Sick Man of Europe . . . Again.”41
Yigal Schleifer of the Christian Science Monitor entitled his article, “Sure it’s fiction. But many Turks see fact in anti-US novel.”42
Despite such angry responses from the United States and the failure of more recent anti-American novels to find a mass audience, the pub-lic’s affection for American villains has not come to an end. In 2006, a sensational movie, The Valley of the Wolves—Iraq, opened to widespread attention. The movie depicts American soldiers in Iraq as merciless killers who have a grisly side business as illegal traders of human organs ex-tracted for transplant. The movie features a spicy revenge operation by Turkey’s Special Forces against the American soldiers (this is a virtual re-taliation against Americans who, in fact, arrested and hooded a group of Turkish Special Forces in Iraq in July 2004). In just a few months, four million people in Turkey paid to see this movie. Culture critic Vecdi Sayar, intriguingly, has argued that The Valley of the Wolves will not, as some have feared, fuel anti-Americanism in Turkey. He argues that, like the Hollywood films it imitates, it will just allow people in Turkey to let off some steam by harmlessly venting their frustrations over American actions in their region.43This may well be true, but the movie’s success
also reveals that a lot of people in Turkey are quite comfortable watch-ing Americans portrayed as monsters—and this perspective is not some-thing that would have been credible to people in Turkey even in the 1990s, let alone during the height of the Cold War.
By 2005, a BBC World News Service poll among twenty-one countries revealed that Turks ranked foremost (with 82 percent) among those who
thought that Mr. Bush presented a threat to global security.44Nor did
Americans fare well in the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey, where 53 percent of the Turks associated them with the word “rude,” 70 percent with “violent,” 68 percent with “greedy,” and 57 percent with “immoral.”45
Since attitudes and opinion are amorphous and transient, one should be careful not to read too much into these surveys. Still, winning Turks’ hearts and minds is made extremely difficult by the well-reported and devastating impact of American depleted uranium shells, cluster bombs, cruise missiles, bunker-buster bombs, and daisy-cutter bombs on the people of neighboring Iraq.
Conclusion
Turkey and the United States have been allies for more than half a cen-tury. And despite the powerful wave of anti-Americanism that has spread throughout Turkey, many in Turkey still hold a reservoir of good feeling toward American society and culture. Furthermore, despite the Iraq de-bacle, Turkey is not opposed to working with the United States to produce international peace and stability. In the post–Cold War period, Ankara participated in multilateral actions in the Balkans and Somalia. But for Turkey, operating in a dangerous region and working deliberately to fos-ter proper relations with its neighbors, the EU, and the United States, le-gality, legitimacy, international law, and pacta sund servanda must be, as they have always been, the cornerstones of Turkish foreign policy. And at a time when questions about religion and politics affect so many na-tions around the world, Turkey must be vigilant in pursuing its tradi-tional path of maintaining a secular state. Thus it is that both the gov-ernment establishment and public opinion in Turkey grew so uneasy and so suspicious when the U.S. government, with the acquiescence of its citizens, used the excuse of the horrible September 11 terrorist attacks to carry out plans to transform the Middle East according to its own nar-row and misguided self-interest. Now that the Iraq war has turned into a deadly quagmire that has increased security hazards in the region, people in Turkey are, generally, alienated by the United States.
For those in Turkey who believe that a good relationship with the United States is desirable and who, even more generally, want people in
Turkey to have reasons to respect the United States, it would be most de-sirable if the American government harnessed its ambitions of omnipo-tence and omnipresence for the sake of Turkish-American relations, and for the sake of the world.46But, for that to happen, Americans need to
question the triumphalist attitude that since the Cold War seems to per-vade not just the American government but American society, too. In his review of John L. Gaddis’s book The Cold War: A New History, the British author Tony Judt stated, “It is one of the ironies of the cold war that America’s victories in Europe were frequently offset by long-term dam-age to its reputation further afield, in Vietnam, for example, or the Middle East: the Soviet Union was not the only ‘loser’ in the cold war.”47
Lawrence Freedman turns this Cold War lesson to recent events in Iraq: “We have reached a turning-point in international politics as well as in Iraq. President George W. Bush is widely seen to have gambled on Iraq and lost. The impact of that loss goes well beyond Iraq. The United States has not been defeated in battle, and is unlikely to be. But it can no longer impose its will on Iraq because it lacks the moral authority to do so.”48This loss of moral authority has been compounded by what the
world has learned about American practices of rendering suspected ter-rorists to places where they may be secretly tortured, as well as the hor-rible treatment Iraqi prisoners have received directly at the hands of American soldiers. These incidents have captured worldwide attention, in part, because they appear to fit so perfectly with America’s general de-fiance of international law49 and pervasive attitude of arrogance and
hubris. In sum, geopolitical or strategic thinking are not substitutes for moral authority, nor is the use of force without explicit authority. Maybe that is why no matter how attractive a democratic culture is, it does not automatically inspire political support. In the years ahead, Americans will have to find new ways to reach out to the people of Turkey to remind them of our two nations’ linked past and the importance of our rela-tionship for the future.
Notes
1. Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (Lon-don: Penguin Group, 2004).
2. “Istanbul,” lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy, music by Nat Simon (of Tin Pan Alley), http://www.fastmail.fm.
3. I˙smet Hulusi I˙mset, “Dünyayı dolas¸an s¸arkı” (The song that travels the world), Resimli 20. Asır, June 11, 1953, http://www.medyakronik.com/arsiv/ lightilave_220601.htm; “A sensual performer, Eartha Kitt,” African American Registry, info@aaregistry.com; http://www.thelyricssite.com/song/Eartha+Kitt/ Uskudara+Gider+Iken, accessed July 3, 2006.
4. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World
of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 1999); Penny M. Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
5. Mehmet Ö. Alkan, “Türkiye’de Amerikan I˙majının Deg˘is¸imi (1945 – 1980)” (The transformation of the American image in Turkey, 1945 –1980),
Toplumsal Tarih 118 (October 2003): 54 – 57.
6. Recorded interviews conducted by the senior class of 2004, Bilkent Uni-versity, Department of International Relations as part of the Turkish Foreign Policy II course requirement.
7. The screenplay of Khartoum was written by Robert Ardrey, and the movie was a British-American coproduction in 1966. Heston played the role of Gen-eral Charles Gordon, who in the end was executed by the “rebels” in 1885 (http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/mahdism.htm, accessed July 3, 2006).
8. Rıfat N. Bali, “Azınlıkların Demokrat Parti Sevdası: Celal Bayar’ın Amerika Seyahati” (The love affair of the minorities with the Democratic Party: Celal Bayar’s visit to the United States), Toplumsal Tarih 122 (February 2004): 14 – 21.
9. Bali, “Azınlıkların Demokrat Parti Sevdası,” 54.
10. Discussion with Professor I˙lber Ortaylı, Bilkent University, May 2004. 11. For a concise history, see George S. Harris, Troubled Alliance:
Turkish-American Problems in Historical Perspective, 1945 –1971 (Washington, D.C.:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1972); Nur Bilge Criss,“A Short History of Anti-Americanism and Terrorism: The Turkish Case,”
Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (2002): 472 – 84.
12. Nur Bilge Criss, “Sanction and Diplomacy,” unpublished, 2006. 13. Nur Bilge Criss, “Mercenaries of Ideology: Turkey’s Terrorism War,” in Barry Rubin, ed., Terrorism and Politics (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 123 – 50. 14. Alan Makovsky, “The New Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy,” SAIS
Re-view, Winter–Spring 1999, 92 –113.
15. Recorded interview by Laden Fulya Özkan with Professor Duygu Sezer, Bilkent University, April 21, 2004.
17. Ali L. Karaosmanog˘lu, “The transatlantic relations of the Afghanistan War and its consequences with regard to Turkey,” Turkish Daily News, Decem-ber 1, 2001.
18. Recorded interview by Daniel Blake with I˙smail Topuzlu, April 29, 2004, Ankara.
19. Joshua Teitelbaum and Meir Litvak,“Students, Teachers and Edward Said; Taking Stock of Orientalism,” trans. Keren Ribo, Middle East Review of
Inter-national Affairs 10, no. 1 (2006): 23 – 43.
20. The ideology of political Islam, which has different manifestations, in-terpretations, and context, may be described as a desire to establish an Islamic state, which enforces traditional religious laws. In other words, it invokes an age-old controversy between secularism and the rule of religion, traditionalism versus modernity, and the struggle for power. Since the depiction has less to do with piety than with power in the name of religion, political Islam is not an ab-solute value system. Stripped of religious veneer, political Islam may even be in-terpreted as the struggle between the old elite and the younger aspirants to power.
21. A majority government tainted by political Islam in secular Turkey is an anachronism. However, the post-1980 election law curbs representation by a myriad of small political parties through a 10 percent national vote threshold. This precaution is meant to prevent small, extremist parties from becoming coalition partners by political bargaining; in the past they exerted more power, once in government, than the popular votes for them justified. Therefore, the AKP formed a majority government by 34 percent of the national vote, without recourse to run-off. The percentage also includes protest votes against main-stream parties that did little about corruption and unemployment.
22. The term moderate Islam was adopted by the Bush administration to mean the opposite of radical Islam, i.e., terrorism. See Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “The Quest for Moderate Islam,” http://www.apomie.com/questforislam, ac-cessed March 2, 2006.
23. Murat Yetkin, “Ilımlı I˙slam Modeli Tuzag˘ı” (The trap of moderate Islam), Radikal, March 20, 2004.
24. “Ilımlı I˙slam Devleti?” (A moderate Islamic state?), editorial,
Cumhuri-yet, March 22, 2004; Mehmet Ali Kıs¸lalı, “ABD I˙le I˙lis¸kiler,” Radikal, March 23,
2004.
25. Ian O. Lesser, “Western Interests in a Changing Turkey,” in Zalmay Kha-lilzad, Ian O. Lesser, and F. Stephen Larrabee, eds., The Future of Turkish-Western
Relations: Toward a Strategic Plan (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2000), 71.
26. Sedat Sertog˘lu, “Adam Geldi” (The Man has Arrived), Sabah, March 20, 2002.
27. S¸aban Kardas¸, “The Strategic Importance of Turkey after September 11,”
Turkish Daily News, May 25, 2002.
28. “ABD Türkiye’ye Savas¸ Açabilir” (The United States may declare war on Turkey), Cumhuriyet, February 9, 2003.
29. Fikret Bilâ, Sivil Darbe Giris¸imi ve Ankara’da Irak Savas¸ları (Attempts at a civilian coup and Iraq wars in Ankara) (Ankara: Ümit Yayıncılık, 2003); Sedat Ergin, “Bizden Saklananlar” (Information withheld from the public), Hürriyet, September 17– 22, 2003; Murat Yetkin, Tezkere: Irak Krizinin Gerçek Öyküsü
(Resolution: The true story of the Iraq crisis) (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2004);
Mustafa Balbay, Irak Bataklıg˘ında Türk-Amerikan I˙lis¸kileri (Turkish-American relations in the Iraqi quagmire) (Istanbul: Cumhuriyet Kitapları, 2004).
30. William Safire, “Advice to America from beyond the Grave,” New York
Times, March 4, 2003; “Turkey’s Wrong Turn,” New York Times, March 24, 2003;
“Turkey’s Wrong Turn Undermines a Genuine Friendship,” New York Times, March 25, 2003; “New Take on Turkey,” New York Times, May 29, 2003.
31. Safire, “Wrong Turn Undermines Friendship.”
32. “Wolfowitz Hints at Support for Political Action by Turkish Military,” http://www.@stratfor.com, accessed May 7, 2003.
33. Selim Deringil, “Aspects of Continuity in Turkish Foreign Policy: Ab-dülhamid II and I˙smet I˙nönü,” in Turkish Foreign Policy during the Second World
War: An “Active” Neutrality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
39 – 54. In 1881, when there was a nationalist uprising (the Urabi Pasha rebel-lion) against the khedive of Egypt (which was nominally still part of the Ot-toman Empire) for squandering national wealth, the British asked Sultan Ab-dülhamid II to put down the insurrection. They were refused because the sultan had no interest in fighting fellow Muslims, nor did he wish to become a tool of Britain. In 1885, the British again asked the Ottomans to put down the Mahdi rebellion in the Sudan in return for territorial compensation from Somalia. Ab-dülhamid II also rejected this offer, stating that Somalia had never been part of the empire, and therefore the suggestion lacked legality and precedence.
34. Deringil, “Aspects of Continuity.”
35. Mustafa Balbay, “ABD Yeni Üsler I˙stiyor” (The United States wants new bases), Cumhuriyet, May 17, 2004; Mehmet Ali Kıs¸lalı, “Türkiye’den Beklen-tiler” (Expectations from Turkey), Radikal, May 21, 2004.
36. “Black Sea force divides Turkey, US,” Turkish Daily News, March 1, 2006. 37. Ümit Bayazog˘lu, review of Children of the Dardanelles, by Pierre Miquel, trans. Nuriye Yig˘itler (Istanbul: Literatür Yayınevi, 2006) in Radikal Kitap, 4:261, March 17, 2006.
38. Orkun Uçar and Burak Turna, Metal Fırtına (Istanbul: Timas¸ Yayınları, 2004).
39. Behiç Gürcihan, “Metal Fırtına Hangi Senaryonun Alt Parçası?” (Which scenario does Metal Storm serve?), http://www.haberim.com, February 23, 2005, accessed March 6, 2006.
40. “Metal Fırtına ile I˙lis¸kimiz Yok” (We have nothing to do with Metal
Storm), sabah.com.tr/2005/02/18, accessed March 6, 2006.
41. Robert L. Pollock, “The Sick Man of Europe . . . Again,” http://www .opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature, February 16, 2005, accessed March 6, 2006. 42. Yigal Schleifer,“Sure it’s fiction. But many Turks see fact in anti-US novel,” http://www.csmonitor.com, February 2005, accessed March 6, 2006.
43. Vecdi Sayar, “Kedi Gözü” (The eye of a cat), Cumhuriyet, February 10, 2006.
44. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/Wirthlin Report, March 2005, accessed March 2, 2006.
45. http://www.lonestartimes.com, February 7, 2006, accessed March 2, 2006. 46. Andrew J. Bacevich, “A Time for Reckoning, Ten Lessons to Take Away from Iraq,” American Conservative, July 19, 2004, turkıstan-n@nıc.surfnet.nl, ac-cessed July 14, 2004.
47. Tony Judt, “A Story Still to Be Told,” review of John Lewis Gaddis’s The
Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2006), New York Review of Books,
March 23, 2006, 11–15; Ellen Schrecker, ed., Cold War Triumphalism: The
Mis-use of History After the Fall of Communism (New York: New Press, 2004).
48. Lawrence Freedman,“America’s battle to regain respect,” ankam_turkfor pol@yahoo.com, accessed May 31, 2004.
49. Philippe Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of
Global Rules from FDR’s Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush’s Illegal War (New
